Hillary Clinton won the presidential election by more than 2 million votes, or 1.5 percent of votes cast. But we get Donald Trump. Cowboy up, people. Yes, Trump lost. But under rules of the game, he has a legitimate claim to the presidency. Our core strength is that we’re a nation of laws. Trump gets...

Every four years, we Americans get to say who we are. In two weeks, in an election that seems all about sex, we get to say it again. So who are we? Maybe we’re Carl Paladino, failed Republican New York gubernatorial candidate and state co-chair of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Here’s Paladino’s idea of who...

“We understand that these limitations will sometimes affect content shared for legitimate reasons … and we apologize for the inconvenience.” — Facebook’s explanation of its censorship It gladdens my Viking heart to inform you that my people have been acting up again. Not in the service of pillage and plunder, but to defend your freedom...

“One thing that qualifies me to run a journalism organization is the fact that I don’t have a journalism degree.” — Roger Ailes The day Donald Trump became the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes lost his job. History rarely delights us with such ironic symmetry. No one has done more to...

Despondent over the Republican convention? Cowboy up. You could be Queen Elizabeth II. The 90-year-old monarch, England’s longest reigning, is the human bookend presiding over the demise of an empire that began than more than four centuries ago with Queen Elizabeth I. Last month — thanks to just the sort of buffoonery on display at the...

“Hurt people hurt people.” – Leon Wieseltier, Brookings Institution fellow Let’s change focus, people. Enough of Trump already. Nothing more can be said about him, or said by him, that will change what we know him to be: unfit for office. But what about those who think he is fit for office? They should compel...

“I play to people’s fantasies.” –Donald Trump, The Art of the Deal It took 229 years, but one incarnation of the Founding Fathers’ worst nightmare has arrived: Donald Trump. He’s just the sort of charismatic charlatan who surely would have inspired queasiness among the Founders about the wisdom of heaving off a king and crowning...

Exhausted and dismayed? Pull up your socks and stagger on, people. We’re still six months away from choosing a new president. Why do we persist in doing this to ourselves? How is it that other people choose their leaders in short order, sans fisticuffs and foolishness? What’s the matter with us, anyway? This, partly: Our...

Citizens dissatisfied with the performance of Okanogan County’s three commissioners recently formed Represent Okanogan County (ROC, www.rocon2016.org) in an effort to replace them. ROC hopes to support viable challengers on the fall ballot who, in its view, are more attuned to the true interests of the county’s residents than incumbents Ray Campbell and Sheilah Kennedy....

We’ve been devising arrangements to manage the tricky business of living together in groups since the dawn of human time. These arrangements have acquired a fancy name: governance. We’ve tried nearly everything — mostly brutal, occasionally enlightened. Now, after 240 years of governance that strives imperfectly toward enlightened, some citizens of this nation...